Power Fantasy
by Pokota
Summary: What if it were Gorion's Ward who had access to cheats instead of the player?


**This is your Bhaalspawn on Lua**

He jumped.

He hadn't meant to jump, of course, but he jumped all the same. Really, it was more of a surprised eep, a too-unsteady spin around, a trip and a fall, but that's ultimately just semantics. But instead of landing in a red smear near the base of the library, he instead passed through the ground itself. Suddenly blinded by the lack of light, he willed himself to a stop. Opening his eyes, he forced his power to the fore and made himself see without light.

All he saw was earth. He hid there for a moment, pondering this oddity when he'd expected to see the grounds of Candlekeep again, but then he remembered that he hadn't actually rewritten himself to be able to see through solid objects. Ah well.

Reload and try again.

This time, he fully intended to jump. Unfortunately, this time his rewriting of himself didn't have an off-switch for seeing through solid objects, and so he jumped very soundly into Gorion's door, leaving him in a daze.

Reload and try again.

Once more, his jump was intentional – only this time he did smear in a red paste on the grounds near the base of the library. He'd forgotten to make himself intangible. Ultimately, he finally got the hang of what he intended to do – it only took him fourteen iterations, one of which ended up with him being flung into the sun by mistake due to accidentally subtracting 12 from gravity instead of adding 12 to it.

That was a fun one to explain to his adoptive father.

Meet our… protagonist, for lack of a better word, the Ward of Gorion, one Maurice Uzziah Zheeturr. When he was born, he was rescued from a dark ritual to restore the God of Murder to life by his adoptive father Gorion. Unfortunately, the ritual succeeded to a minor degree in that a very small aspect of Bhaal was restored to the Forgotten Realms, moreso than in the births of other Bhaalspawn. For you see, Bhaal was a sore loser and knew how to access the hidden arcana of the Creator's Original Necessary Service Over Living Entities, or the CONSOLE, and he invoked it whenever he wasn't getting inducted by Cyric into the ranks of the Dead Three or being locked into mortality by Ao until… well, such lore is honestly outside the scope of this fanfic. Needless to say, Bhaal used it every chance he got, which was surprisingly often.

Actually invoking it was a different matter, as one also needed an understanding of the basis of the Weave, Mystara's Language of the Ultimate Artistry – her LUA, if you will. That Bhaal had access to it at all was already a minor wonder, given it's usually reserved for beings such as Elminster or Larrel of the Seldarine Hand or Biff the Understudy and generally has world-breaking repercussions for using it lightly.

Such as the aforementioned reversal of gravity. Fortunately, Maruice had mastered a part to the CONSOLE that even Bhaal could not touch, powers that Mystara herself had invoked only once to the effect of creating the Weave in the first place – the powers of SAVE and RELOAD (the author will leave the pretentious expansions of the same to the reader's imagination). Not that Gorion approved of using the LUA and its kind without authorization from Mystara, but he at least admitted that, in the interest of Science at least, it was better to be able to reverse damage from experimentation than it was to try and live with it.

The fact that Maurice tried to keep his collateral damage to a minimum anyway didn't hurt matters. Neither did the fact that Gorion much preferred having this power under his tutelage as opposed to out in the corruptible streets of Baldur's Gate as it could have been. As it was magic (sort of), and Maurice would never be physically impressive anyway, why not cultivate it and teach the young dwarf to use it safely?

Gorion sighed. "Maurice, come back up here. I need to speak with you."

Maurice, for his part, popped back into existence as commanded. "Did you know that there are doppelgangers in the catacombs down there?"

Gorion blinked. "I do now. I'll have to warn Ulraunt about it before we leave. You didn't touch anything in the catacombs, did you?"

"I would have reloaded if anything untoward happened." Maurice evaded. "Though I did map it out a bit."

"In other words, you spotted something shiny, noticed a trap you couldn't disable, and decided to come back when you knew how to remove it?" Gorion gave his ward a Look.

Maurice blushed and nodded. "If I can get Imoen down there to-"

Gorion literally stamped his foot. "Absolutely not, child. You will not endanger her." He paused and decided to amend his statement. "You will not endanger her _unnecessarily_."

"But she'll be intangible! I just need a second opinion on how to-"

"Absolutely not! That you couldn't bypass that trap even with your Gifts speaks to how dangerous it must be."

Maurice didn't think that a Manual of Gainful Exercise was all that dangerous, but he ceded the point as he knew Gorion wouldn't allow him to take anyone or anything anyway. "So… you needed to speak with me?"

Gorion exhaled slowly to calm himself. "Yes, child. As you know, dark forces are afoot that would twist and turn your Gifts toward their ends. My friends in the Harpers have informed me that these dark forces intend to steal you from under my nose tomorrow if they can, or else will try and slay you if they cannot take you."

"Sounds painful, but they don't know about my Gifts. Or do they?"

Gorion shrugged. "I do not know, but they will target you anyway regardless of if they know about your gifts, and it is safer to assume that they already know about your… birthright, I suppose is a good word for it."

"Because I'm one of the many children of Bhaal." Maurice said, frowning. "I wonder why I was granted knowledge of LUA? Surely there would have been others better suited for this 'gift'."

Gorion shrugged once more. "For all I know, Mystara may have given it to you specifically for her own purposes. I don't have enough knowledge of the matter to guess, and there's no time left to gain it. Have you prepared yourself for our journey?"

"Yes, Dad." Maurice rolled his eyes. "I, er, borrowed a few potions of healing from the infirmary, Fuller loaned me his family heirloom, and Imoen's promised to meet us a day's march out of Candlekeep."

"I'm going to pretend I didn't hear any of those." Gorion said. "Though I'm not surprised that Imoen's planning on joining us despite my insistence."

"I also had to remove a few assassins that tried to kill me earlier today."

Gorion froze. "Assassins? What were their names? Where did they attack you? Why wasn't I informed of this?"

"One of them was named Carbos, and the other was… hmm, I don't think I actually learned his name."

"And when you said you removed them..."

"I got mortally wounded by Carbos, so I had to reload from that. This time around I was talking with Hull when he attacked, so that's put paid to him."

"And the other one?"

"He made the mistake of attacking me in front of Tethtoril. I didn't even need to use Lua for that one, it just sort of happened."

"And you haven't had to reload since?"

Maurice paused. "Shit." he breathed. "We need to get moving, I didn't even think about that."

Reloading, despite how powerful it could have been, did have its limits. It could only send you so far back in time, and you went back to a fixed point in time that had to be prepared – or rather, Saved - ahead of time. Going back would undo anything that the traveler had a hand in changing, so Carbos was never arrested for attempted murder. The other guy got bored and tried attacking Tethtoril for kicks, which preserved that arrest across reloads. The biggest limit is that Maurice could only Save one point in time at a time, which only makes sense as he's mortal. Not even Mystara had attempted more than one Save Point when weaving the weave.

There was one final drawback to reloading, one that nobody yet knew, which would only make itself known that night. It required clarity of mind to invoke, and clarity of mind would be the last thing Maurice would have that night. By the time he would regain it, it would be too late to go back.


End file.
